Oil temperature

MidnightBlack245

Active Member
Oct 4, 2020
30
12
What’s the ideal oil temperature to reach before putting your foot down? The majority of journeys are to and from work, which takes less than 15 minutes, so I very rarely boot the car, as I know that the oil will still be cold. Which made me think which temperature is the target before switching to Cupra mode and letting loose
 

Damo H

Remind me, what's an indicator?
Staff member
Moderator
Oct 3, 2012
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Car Length In Front
Revo remaps on these don't give you any extra power until engine temp is above 70 dgrees, so that's a good indicator. Personally 80 degrees.
 

CupraGeezer

Active Member
May 11, 2018
357
163
The attached graph shows viscosity vs temperature. 5W-30 has a viscosity of 161 cSt at 20 deg.C, reducing to 10 cSt at 100 deg.C.

This gives an idea of the impact of nailing an engine from cold. I wait until 80 deg.C, by which time the viscosity has dropped to 17 cSt. This is close enough to the fully warm temperature in my book.
graph_4_viscosity_comparison.jpg
 
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SuperV8

Active Member
May 30, 2019
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I think its more to do with temperature gradients across different parts of the engine - rather than the viscosity of the oil.

You don't want to give full load to a cold engine, due to a cold block and dumping lots of heat into the cylinders - causes large thermal stresses withing the engine. One of the reasons Rover K series head gaskets used to fail.
 
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SRGTD

Active Member
May 26, 2014
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1,279
90 for me. I have oil temp displayed on the MFD pretty much all the time.
 
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